Conceiving the Empire

Conceiving the Empire PDF Author: Fritz-Heiner Mutschler
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191550442
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 502

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Book Description
The essays in Conceiving the Empire explore the mental images, ideas, and symbolical representations of `empire' which developed in the two most powerful political entities of antiquity: China and Rome. While the central focus is on historiography, other related fields are also explored: geography and cartography, epigraphy, art and architecture, and, more generally, political thought and the history of ideas. Written by a collaborative team of experts in Sinology and Classical Studies, the volume focuses the attention of the emerging discipline of East-West cross-cultural studies on an essential feature of the ancient Mediterranean and Chinese worlds: the emergence of `empire' and the enduring influence of the `imperial' order.

Conceiving the Empire

Conceiving the Empire PDF Author: Fritz-Heiner Mutschler
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191550442
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 502

Get Book Here

Book Description
The essays in Conceiving the Empire explore the mental images, ideas, and symbolical representations of `empire' which developed in the two most powerful political entities of antiquity: China and Rome. While the central focus is on historiography, other related fields are also explored: geography and cartography, epigraphy, art and architecture, and, more generally, political thought and the history of ideas. Written by a collaborative team of experts in Sinology and Classical Studies, the volume focuses the attention of the emerging discipline of East-West cross-cultural studies on an essential feature of the ancient Mediterranean and Chinese worlds: the emergence of `empire' and the enduring influence of the `imperial' order.

Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph

Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph PDF Author: Jaś Elsner
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780192842015
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Western culture saw some of the most significant and innovative developments take place during the passage from antiquity to the middle ages. This stimulating new book investigates the role of the visual arts as both reflections and agents of those changes. It tackles two inter-related periodsof internal transformation within the Roman Empire: the phenomenon known as the 'Second Sophistic' (c. ad 100300)two centuries of self-conscious and enthusiastic hellenism, and the era of late antiquity (c. ad 250450) when the empire underwent a religious conversion to Christianity. Vases, murals, statues, and masonry are explored in relation to such issues as power, death, society, acculturation, and religion. By examining questions of reception, viewing, and the culture of spectacle alongside the more traditional art-historical themes of imperial patronage and stylisticchange, Jas Elsner presents a fresh and challenging account of an extraordinarily rich cultural crucible in which many fundamental developments of later European art had their origins. 'a highly individual work . . . wonderful visual and comparative analysis . . . I can think of no other general book on Roman art that deals so elegantly and informatively with the theme of visuality and visual desire.' Professor Natalie Boymel Kampen, Barnard College, New York 'exciting and original . . . a vibrant impression of creative energy and innovation held in constant tension by the persistence of more traditional motifs and techniques. Elsner constantly surprises and intrigues the reader by approaching familiar material in new ways.' Professor Averil Cameron,Keble College, Oxford

Empire's New Clothes

Empire's New Clothes PDF Author: Paul Passavant
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113595089X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
The publication of Empire last year created a sensation that spread from academia to the media to cocktail-party buzz. A book that causes such a scholarly commotion comes along only once every decade or so wrote the New York Times , as the book's radical vision of imperial power in the new millennium sparked both histrionic condemnation and serious academic engagement. After September 11 this discussion of Empire's political and legal theories was closely linked with the struggle to redefine America's place in a changed world. The book was read as a diagnosis of our era and a call for liberatory action, while Michael Hardt was acclaimed as the next Jacques Derrida. Framing the debate about this landmark work, The Empire's New Clothes brings together leading scholars to make sense of Empire's new vocabulary and tackle its claims head on. Does the authors' vision accurately describe the power structure of today's world? Do the processes of globalization today represent a fundamental break from the past? Is the book really a communist manifesto for the new age? Empire's New Clothes investigates these and other key issues, giving academics, students, and lay readers a handle on a work that touches the most vital themes of current political, social, and economic life.

Ancient China and the Yue

Ancient China and the Yue PDF Author: Erica Brindley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107084784
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
A richly empirical discussion of ethnic identity formation in the ancient world, presenting the peoples of China's southern frontier.

Language and State

Language and State PDF Author: Xing Yu
Publisher: FriesenPress
ISBN: 1039125182
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 763

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Book Description
Language and State: A Theory of the Progress of Civilization, Second Edition, argues that the state takes form because of language. It argues that since humans began to use language, they have been able to create and use media. Media include materials, human behavior, human consciousness and humans themselves. Media extend the distance of linguistic communication and then humans interact with one another on a large scale and form themselves into a large community. This leads to the formation of the state and the dissolution of tribes. Linguistic communication then structures human interactions in the formation of the state. Humans exchange information with one another, give interpretations, display attitudes and make promises to one another. They even allow for one person to issue commands to all others. Humans organize the state in various types of linguistic interaction, which further create a condition for the formation of the common interest of all: a foundation for the building of the state. Then, humans rationalize the organization of the state in extending the distance of linguistic communication. Humans realize freedom, equality, peace, democracy and justice in their mutual linguistic interactions. Language gives origin to the state and sustains the development of the state. Language has preset the whole process of the progress of human civilization.

South Africa, Greece, Rome

South Africa, Greece, Rome PDF Author: Grant Parker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110710081X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 579

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Book Description
This book explores how since colonial times South Africa has created its own vernacular classicism, both in creative media and everyday life.

The Empire of Value

The Empire of Value PDF Author: Andre Orlean
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262549581
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
An argument that conceiving of economic value as a social force makes it possible to develop a new and more powerful theory of market behavior. With the advent of the 2007–2008 financial crisis, the economics profession itself entered into a crisis of legitimacy from which it has yet to emerge. Despite the obviousness of their failures, however, economists continue to rely on the same methods and to proceed from the same underlying assumptions. André Orléan challenges the neoclassical paradigm in this book, with a new way of thinking about perhaps its most fundamental concept, economic value. Orléan argues that value is not bound up with labor, or utility, or any other property that preexists market exchange. Economic value, he contends, is a social force whose vast sphere of influence, amounting to a kind of empire, extends to every aspect of economic life. Markets are based on the identification of value with money, and exchange value can only be regarded as a social institution. Financial markets, for example, instead of defining an extrinsic, objective value for securities, act as a mechanism for arriving at a reference price that will be accepted by all investors. What economists must therefore study, Orléan urges, is the hold that value has over individuals and how it shapes their perceptions and behavior. Awarded the prestigious Prix Paul Ricoeur on its original publication in France in 2011, The Empire of Value has been substantially revised and enlarged for this edition, with an entirely new section discussing the financial crisis of 2007–2008.

Rome and China

Rome and China PDF Author: Walter Scheidel
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 0195336909
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
This volume brings together experts in the history of the ancient Mediterranean and early China and presents a series of comparative case studies on clearly defined aspects of state formation in early eastern and western Eurasia, focusing on the process of initial developmental convergence.

Conceiving the Old Regime

Conceiving the Old Regime PDF Author: Leslie Tuttle
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199700664
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Early modern rulers believed that the more subjects over whom they ruled, the more powerful they would be. In 1666, France's Louis XIV and his minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert put this axiom into effect, instituting policies designed to encourage marriage and very large families. Their Edict on Marriage promised lucrative rewards to French men of all social statuses who married before age twenty-one or fathered ten or more living, legitimate children. So began a 150-year experiment in governing the reproductive process, the largest populationist initiative since the Roman Empire. Conceiving the Old Regime traces the consequences of premodern pronatalism for the women, men, and government officials tasked with procreating the abundant supply of soldiers, workers, and taxpayers deemed essential for France's glory. While everyone knew-in a practical rather than a scientific sense-how babies were made, the notion that humans should exercise control over reproduction remained deeply controversial in a Catholic nation. Drawing on a wealth of archival sources, Leslie Tuttle shows how royal bureaucrats mobilized the limited power of the premodern state in an attempt to shape procreation in the king's interest. By the late eighteenth century, marriage, reproduction, and family size came to be hot-button political issues, inspiring debates that contributed to the character of the modern French nation. Conceiving the Old Regime reveals the deep historical roots of France's perennial concern with population, and connects the intimate lives of men and women to the public world of power and the state.

China's International Roles

China's International Roles PDF Author: Sebastian Harnisch
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317434102
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
This collection examines changes in China’s international role over the past century. Tracing the links between domestic and external expectations in the PRC’s role conception and preferred engagement patterns in world politics, the work provides a systematic account of changes in China’s role and the mechanisms of role taking. Individual chapters address the impact of China’s history and identity on its bilateral role taking patterns with the United States, Japan, Africa, the Europe Union, and Socialist States as well as China’s role in international institutions, the G-20, and East Asia’s Financial Order. Each of the empirical chapters is written to a common template exploring the role of historical self-identification, altercasting and domestic role contestation in shaping the PRC’s role. The volume provides an analytically coherent framework evaluating whether cooperation or conflict in China’s international engagement is likely to increase, and if so, the extent to which this will follow from incompatible domestic demands and external expectations. By combining a theoretical framework with strong comparative case studies, this volume contributes to the ongoing debate on China’s rise and integration into the international society and provides sound conclusions about the prospects for a transition of China’s purpose in world politics.